BASHAM: The American people v. the GOP

We learn a lot more from defeat than from victory. Trump’s Republican Party must demonstrate it understands the wrath American voters unleashed across the midterms. Republicans have suffered the worst midterm outcome for either major party since the 1974 Watergate election. Nevertheless, the wrong lessons may be learned. Ronald Reagan once observed, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant; it is just that they know so much that is not so.” The same may be said for the senators, congressmen, financial donors, and political advisers who constitute today’s Republican establishment.

Republican elites "know" the party must rid itself of MAGA-style populism. For instance, Hispanics swung back to Democrats because of Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown. But Hispanics, who two years ago voted for Trump, wanted a crackdown. Successful closure of US-Mexico border pleased them.

Yet, akin to rest of Trump’s 2024 coalition, they also opposed new wars and expected an economic renaissance would rapidly improve their financial situation. When Trump failed on those two pledges, Hispanic voters – and many Black, new, and younger working-class voters – ditched the party.

But Republican defeat wasn’t caused by mass conversion of Trump voters. Only some switched. A significant slice of Trump’s 2024 voter coalition (40% were Independents and Democrats) didn’t vote, including anti-war rural voters and truck drivers impacted by high diesel costs.

Ironically, it is establishment Republicans, not MAGA loyalists or new Trump coalition members, who remained with the party. They did so because Trump abandoned much of the populist platform that earlier offended them.

Five points:

• For a decade, Trump maintained the rarefied status of Promise Keeper. In his first term, and early into his second, Trump kept most of his campaign promises – MAGA loved him for it. Today, Trump’s and Congress’s high disapproval ratings reflect broken promises – to reduce cost of living; to prosecute Epstein Files predators; to eliminate government corruption; to pass ID requirements to vote; to not start a war in West Asia. Broken promises outweigh voter perceptions of successes on border security, reducing crime, cutting govt workforce, uncovering government programs rife with financial fraud and so on.
• What’s to be done? Republican campaigns are awash in donor cash, but their instrumentation requires a substantive and stylistic upgrade. But lucrative campaign contracts go to establishment pollsters and media consultants, who target voters aged over 60, whose voter share, since 2020, fell from 36% to 30%, while populist pollsters and comms experts who produce accurate data and effective advertising suited to Millennials and Gen Z, now 50% of voters, are shut out.
• Moving ideologically Left is illogical. Two-thirds of those who voted Democrats cast an anti-GOP vote, rather than a positive one for Democrats, with favorability ratings even lower than Republicans. With registered Independents now more numerous than Republicans, pragmatic, transactional, non-ideological populism is the future of American politics. Populist, anti-establishment Trump won in 2016 and 2024. Establishment Republicans, led by a non-populist Trump, were crushed in 2026.
• This defeat was self-inflicted. An electoral resurgence is also in Republicans’ own hands. If Republicans do not quickly appreciate populism is their route out of the electoral wilderness, strategically astute Democrats will plant their own populist flag and dominate American politics for a generation. To succeed, populism must appreciate the intensity of coming electoral majority’s hostility to status quo. In a new book, pollster Richard Baris says younger voters see a rigged, anachronistic system that benefits elites at their expense.
• A non-interventionist foreign policy married to economic populism that prioritizes Main Street America over Wall Street, has overwhelming public support. Ditto for DOGE-style root-’n-branch reform of government spending, tariff revenue used to eliminate income tax for most workers, and empowering personal and consumer freedom with regard to political speech, medical autonomy, food purchases, and financial sovereignty.

Ahead lie two years of policy stasis and lawfare because Trump, egged on by establishment Republicans, lost his way. Most voters hope a humbled president and his party focus upon advancing peace abroad and prosperity at home.

This article was originally published in the Times of India.